tri-Ace Tech Demo Shows the Goods

Star Ocean developer tri-Ace recently posted a video on their Research and Development page (fully in English) showing off the technology that they are currently working with, calling the video, "tri-Ace Technical Demo Trailer 2011". The video is showing off in particular "Physically Based Rendering version 0.1". This includes real-time lighting and shadowing, physical-based shading models, image-based global illumination, and more. The goal is to, as they put it, "Keep material consistency under indirect illumination using Physically-based Rendering."

Although the company says that the world and its characters having nothing to do with a game currently in development, it certainly looks rather incredible as a possible use for a new Star Ocean, and gives a promising look into what developers will be able to achieve in future RPGs. Then Square-Enix comes in and ruins the party with their latest tech demo showing Cloud so that we ignore companies like tri-Ace. And the world keeps turning...